The new cultivar is the product of a planned breeding program carried out by the inventor in Redland Bay, Australia in September 2002. The objective of the breeding program was to create new chrysocephalum cultivars having a compact plant habit, many flowering shoots, long racemes with many inflorescences, silver-grey foliage, and a long flowering period.
The female or seed parent was unpatented Proprietary Selection 02-47. The female parent is characterized by its open plant habit with spatulate leaves sparsely covered with silver hairs, few short racemes with few inflorescences held in tight clusters, and very short involucral bracts which are yellow in color.
The male or pollen parent is unknown since the pollination was performed in isolation using native insects. Possible male parents are unpatented Proprietary Selection 01 - 11 or unpatented Proprietary Selection 01 - 13. Both of these selections are generally characterized by their open pendulous to upright plant habit, small glossy linear leaves, long weeping flowering stalks with few inflorescences held in loose clusters, and very short involucral bracts that are yellow in color.
The first act of asexual reproduction of the new cultivar was accomplished by vegetative cuttings from the selection in August 2003 in a controlled environment in Redland Bay, Queensland, Australia, by or under the supervision of the inventor. Horticultural examination of controlled flowerings of successive plantings has shown that the unique combination of characteristics of the new cultivar are firmly fixed and are retained through successive generations of asexual reproduction.
The new cultivar has not been observed under all possible environmental conditions. The phenotype may vary significantly with variations in environment such as temperature, light intensity, fertilization levels, and day length without, however, any variance in genotype. The following observations, measurements and comparisons describe plants grown in Redland Bay, Queensland, Australia, under normal commercial growing conditions. The age of the plant described is 40 weeks.